{"product_id":"the-age-of-decadence-britain-1880-to-1914-9781847947420","title":"The Age of Decadence: Britain 1880 to 1914","description":"\u003cp\u003eA riveting account of the pre-First World War years . . . The Age of Decadence is an enormously impressive and enjoyable read. Dominic Sandbrook  Sunday Times  A magnificent account of a less than magnificent epoch. Jonathan Meades  Literary Review  The folk-memory of Britain in the years before the Great War is of a powerful  contented  orderly and thriving country. She commanded a vast empire. She bestrode international commerce. Her citizens were living longer  profiting from civil liberties their grandparents only dreamt of  and enjoying an expanding range of comforts and pastimes. The mood of pride and self-confidence is familiar from Elgars Pomp and Circumstance marches  newsreels of George Vs coronation and the Londons great Edwardian palaces.  Yet things were very different below the surface. In The Age of Decadence Simon Heffer exposes the contradictions of late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain. He explains how  despite the nations massive power  a mismanaged war against the Boers in South Africa created profound doubts about her imperial destiny. He shows how attempts to secure vital social reforms prompted the twentieth centurys gravest constitutional crisis and coincided with the worst industrial unrest in British history. He describes how politicians who conceded the vote to millions more men disregarded women so utterly that female suffragists public protest bordered on terrorism. He depicts a ruling class that fell prey to degeneracy and scandal. He analyses a national psyche that embraced the motor-car  the sensationalist press and the science fiction of H. G. Wells  but also the Arts and Crafts of William Morris and the nostalgia of A. E. Housman. And he concludes with the crisis that in the summer of 1914 threatened the existence of the United Kingdom  a looming civil war in Ireland.  He lights up the era through vivid pen-portraits of the great men and women of the day  including Gladstone  Parnell  Asquith and Churchill  but also Mrs Pankhurst  Beatrice Webb  Baden-Powell  Wilde and Shaw  creating a richly detailed panorama of a great power that  through both accident and arrogance  was forced to face potentially fatal challenges.  A devastating critique of prewar Britain . . . disturbingly relevant to the world in which we live. Gerard DeGroot  The Times  You wont put it down . . . A really riveting read. Rana Mitter  BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45280060768309,"sku":"ByrdShop_1847947425","price":100.81,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781847947420.jpg?v=1780618634","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-age-of-decadence-britain-1880-to-1914-9781847947420","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}